Once, while teaching in Spain, I asked my students if their behavior was the same in every class. In the haphazard unison of middle-schoolers, they shouted back a definitive “no.” They didn’t talk about the freedom teachers gave them, how much they liked the teacher, or the difficulty of their classes. Instead, they explained, they behaved well for the teachers they respected the most -- not the “fun” teachers or the “nice” ones, but the teachers who controlled the classroom.
And they aren’t the only ones.
And they aren’t the only ones.
An interesting analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) confirms that my students’ perspective wasn’t an anomaly; in fact, students across the globe respond positively to ordered classrooms. Not only did students perform better, as determined by 2009 PISA data and the frequency of classroom disruptions, but they also reported enjoying those classes more. And the findings weren’t just true for schools in affluent communities. After controlling for qualities such as socioeconomic status, demographics, and markers of school quality, the analysis found a strong association between fewer classroom disruptions and higher student performance in 31 countries. This makes orderly classrooms “one of few school-level characteristics that show a significant positive relationship with performance consistently across countries, even after accounting for other school features and students’ background,” according to the report.
This is not the picture that is normally conjured by the notion of classroom orderliness, especially when mentioned in the context of reform. The corporate model, the criticism goes, turns children into widgets, and the strict classroom environment that this dehumanizing, mass-production mentality naturally produces in response to the demands of standardized testing would lay waste not only to joy in the classroom, but also to student creativity and learning. But the argument is conventionally made in the abstract; whatever evidence proffered is anecdotal, and you are meant more to imagine the harm being done than actually see it.
As Doug Lemov puts it, “So many people will try to convince you that establishing an orderly environment is done ‘to’ kids. That it’s a fight against them.” But, as he argues, order is what makes room for both learning and joy. In an environment that is predictable and free of disruption, kids can feel themselves master new skills, which turns out to be pretty fun.
It’s worth thinking about why our instincts are so easily led astray on this question. Our understanding of creativity and hard work are often our most fraught with assumptions about human behavior. Conventional wisdom tells us that creativity requires complete freedom to express our ideas without restraint. And, we are meant to believe, stress and labor are enemies of the sort of free-flowing thought on which such creativity precariously rests. But a little serious reflection on what it takes to be great at any creative pursuit shows us just how much of a paper tiger this threat really is.
In his Talks to Teachers on Psychology, William James addresses this idea and how the conventional wisdom gets it wrong:
This is not the picture that is normally conjured by the notion of classroom orderliness, especially when mentioned in the context of reform. The corporate model, the criticism goes, turns children into widgets, and the strict classroom environment that this dehumanizing, mass-production mentality naturally produces in response to the demands of standardized testing would lay waste not only to joy in the classroom, but also to student creativity and learning. But the argument is conventionally made in the abstract; whatever evidence proffered is anecdotal, and you are meant more to imagine the harm being done than actually see it.
As Doug Lemov puts it, “So many people will try to convince you that establishing an orderly environment is done ‘to’ kids. That it’s a fight against them.” But, as he argues, order is what makes room for both learning and joy. In an environment that is predictable and free of disruption, kids can feel themselves master new skills, which turns out to be pretty fun.
It’s worth thinking about why our instincts are so easily led astray on this question. Our understanding of creativity and hard work are often our most fraught with assumptions about human behavior. Conventional wisdom tells us that creativity requires complete freedom to express our ideas without restraint. And, we are meant to believe, stress and labor are enemies of the sort of free-flowing thought on which such creativity precariously rests. But a little serious reflection on what it takes to be great at any creative pursuit shows us just how much of a paper tiger this threat really is.
In his Talks to Teachers on Psychology, William James addresses this idea and how the conventional wisdom gets it wrong:
We speak, it is true, of good habits and of bad habits; but, when people use the word 'habit,' in the majority of instances it is a bad habit which they have in mind. They talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit and the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices.
The idea James presents is that excellence in anything, including creativity, requires training and hard work. We may like to believe that the best of our qualities are the result of our choices while our vices are the result of our habits; the truth is that habit underpins everything we do. And that’s the key to the value of order in classrooms. Because when the boring stuff, such as note-taking and paper-passing, is turned into habit, it leaves room for the building of the habits that underpin creativity and depth of thought.
Critics of reform too often seek to rally around a caricature of a classroom, rigid and pressure-filled. But when you look at what good instruction looks like -- a structured environment that ensures learning happens and assesses students to see the path they’re headed down before it’s too late -- neither seems quite as scary as some would have you believe.
CJ Libassi, a former teacher, is a public policy graduate student at the University of Michigan. Reach him via email or Twitter.
Critics of reform too often seek to rally around a caricature of a classroom, rigid and pressure-filled. But when you look at what good instruction looks like -- a structured environment that ensures learning happens and assesses students to see the path they’re headed down before it’s too late -- neither seems quite as scary as some would have you believe.
CJ Libassi, a former teacher, is a public policy graduate student at the University of Michigan. Reach him via email or Twitter.
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